How absolutely wonderful is it to wake up on a Saturday morning with nothing on the To-do list but waking up the arm that’s fallen asleep under your face, putting on comfy clothes and putzing the day away under the promise of sunshine. How absolute soul crushing is it when you realize it’s not Saturday but Wednesday, the sun is not shining, your hand might actually be dead and not just sleeping and you have a list of things on the To-do list that will be impossible to get done in one day let alone on a stupid "Surprise I'm Wednesday not Saturday." And that on that list of things To-do is the memorization of fifty plus pages of dialog, due by next week amongst all the other fiddly things that need doing that shouldn’t suck up a day but will. And all this realization is happening while your arm decides it’s not dead after all and sends you a wake-up call of the pain of a thousand needles on fire and you start to wish you have the tools to cut it off and throw it from your body. And it’s then you realize that even if it were Saturday, you’d still not be able to putz about the house because you’re scheduled to play lovely assistant to Husband’s handy man as he rebuilds the staircase to the basement, while learning those fifty pages of dialog in a full body suit of rubber to protect you from the disease ridden, pee stained old stair case, in between his shouting – sorry, gentle words of encouragement as you hold whatever piece of wood he has told you to hold over your head for hours, your back protesting and my hatred for him and staircases and all things DIY growing…UGH. Can I just go back to bed, to the moment half-an-hour ago when life was good and filled with nothing but hope and rainbows? No? Well, crappy crap.

Migraine. A brain melting, mushy face making migraine, exploded into being shortly after breakfast yesterday. Each blink of my eyeball pumped bursts of fire followed by nauseous waves of misery through my brain. I spent the day lying still in the hopes that the throbbing stabbing pain would not happen if I didn’t move. Or breathe. Or live. Dying, the only option that would make the queasiness, the excruciating agony brought on by a single blink of my left eye stop. The massive thunderstorm raging outside in bursts of intense lightning and furious thunder and heavy rain mirrored the waves of wretchedness rendering me useless on the couch. Yesterday was a total loss. This morning, I’m fragile. Careful to not open my eyes too wide, less the light reflecting off the waterlogged leaves sets It off again. Moving slowly around the house as if my gentle steps will not wake the migraine from its shallow sleep. Trying not to search too hard for that elusive word, scared the throbbing will return, frighten all the words away, leaving me stupid and moaning in a pile of pity again.

The only benefit from the day of wretchedness, a Mohawk fashioned from the endless stroking of my poor throbbing hair. Today, I’m afraid to touch it. It still hurts. Every strand is still weeping with the memory of yesterday.

I put myself to bed at 6pm yesterday. I wasn’t sick per se, I just had one hell of an exhaustion hangover bought on by three days straight of working, two awesome and very different concerts that necessitated long discussions afterwards resulting in eight hours total of sleep and one fractured nap, an attempt to go a fair on Sunday that was rained out so just a beautiful drive to lunch through the spectacular spring green and, despite assurance of this not happening right away, Husband started another project and began to remove the stairs to the basement. A project he will not finish in one day like promised. A project that created a lot of dust, dirt and debris that he just threw in a pile on the floor in the basement so that when the tornados the weather guys promised us land and the power goes out, we have to step over all the pieces of wood trash filled with nails in the dark and then take up shelter in a room filled with pissed off displaced bugs. Result from that loooong weekend of awesomeness? Bedtime at 6pm on Sunday night. At 1am, I woke up to a rather loud thunderstorm with sparkly lightning and rumbles that sounded like they were inside the house. I moved myself to the couch in our newly renovated den and snuggled in to ‘watch’ the storm. But I’m useless without my glasses all so I did was watch the hazy lightning light up the darkness, throwing the dark shadows into weird Dr. Seuss shaped trees. I worried about the owls but other than the dancing tree leaves just above the street light, their nesting spots were in darkness. Only two of the triplets have been hanging outside anyway. The third dude, Harpo, hangs out in the nest watching video game, I assume and only coming out in the early leaving when food is supposed to arrive. I have to hope they were smart enough to move inside the nest. Well, Groucho seems to still be on time-out in the neighboring tree so he’s going to have to ride it out in the nook of a tree but Zeppo needs to get his shy self out of the top of the tree line and inside with Harpo. These things I think about at 1am when I cannot sleep but cannot stay awake.

Really, these things I think about all the time but saying I was thinking of them 1am on a stormy night doesn't sound as crazy. I’ll write more about the concerts – when I’m coherent to put words on paper that aren’t ‘different’ and ‘awesome’. For now, I’m going to try to talk an 80lb dog into a pretty impressive thunder and lightning storm to use the bathroom. Odds are we are both going to get wet and angry and she still won’t go. Such is Monday in the spring here in Nashville; sunshine and loveliness every weekend and massive storm fronts on Mondays that bring about dog fights. Really, me fighting with her, she would hold it in all day just to not get wet. And yet, if I bring out a hose and put it on spray, it’s a party in her mouth…

Dogs are confusing and Monday’s are wet.

That is sum of knowledge you’ll have gleaned from this post - Dogs are confusing and Monday's are wet . I’ll bow now to the gentle applause and get myself dressed for battle for I cannot put this off any longer. Sigh.

There are three baby owls in this picture. THREE! Upper right, right of center and bottom center sitting just above the wire.

We are the proud stalker parents of three fuzzy mistrustful little dudes!

Meet Grouch, Harpo and Zeppo who, to be honest with you, are totally interchangeable right now. In fact, we only know who is who because they can’t fly right now and spend most of their time pretending to be large lumps on the tree branches. But I’m almost a full time owl stalker and I can pick out a fluff ball from a branch like no one else – mostly because other people have better things to do.

Groucho - rebel that he is, is sitting in a neighboring tree. Since he can't really fly yet, we have no idea how he made it up there. The branches don't touch. He must have fallen out of the nesting tree and climbed up the wrong one. Or he's in time out...

Harpo

Zeppo

Anyway, triplets, people! Three baby owls! And they apparently can’t fly for around 40 days so you have more of this unhealthy Strix Varia fascination to look forward to.

If you're looking for a little more voyeurism, check out this link to a owl nest web cam. Totally what I'll be doing next year - if I can figure out how to climb the tree, install the camera and not lose an eye as Mr. and Mrs. Owl do their best to kill me. For now, I'll content myself with blurry pictures taken with my camera from the bottom of the tree. Or watching this YouTube video of feeding time.

Yeah, just a bit obsessed.

To the point that last night, during the MASSIVE thunder and lightning storm, I was trying to figure out a way to bring the poor soggy messes inside. And after Husband explained that I was on the verge on cat lady crazy, I spent the night tossing and turning and worrying for their heath and safety, getting up waaaay before my alarm to check on them. But it's still too dark to see more than a very waterlogged Groucho trying to shake off some of the wet. Do you think they would like an umbrella?

I'm thinking I might have to see someone about this Owl preoccupation...

Yes, it sounds dirty but it’s not. A Terry’s Dark Chocolate Orange Ball is a ball of dark chocolate infused with orange – okay, I made that last part up. It’s an orange flavored ball of dark chocolate that is in segments like an orange. You whack it and eat the segments sections one at a time. Little morsels of chocolate orange deliciousness that satisfy, just one segment at a time...

But all that remains of my Terry’s Dark Chocolate Orange Ball is the wrapper and some chocolate crumbs at the bottom of a crumpled Ziploc bag.

The Dark Chocolate Orange Ball that Husband told me he had been "eating some of” but didn’t mention that he’d eaten the whole thing and put the almost empty bag back in the candy drawer in the fridge. The Dark Chocolate Orange that he said he didn’t like because it contained two things he didn’t like; dark chocolate and orange flavored chocolate. The Dark Chocolate Orange he ate because he didn’t have any of “his” chocolate around to eat. Which is a bold faced lie because he just bought 26 boxes of chocolate cream eggs but those, he says, are suppose to last him all year. And I’d buy him whatever other kind of chocolate he’d like to eat but then he complains that I’m bringing “that poison in to the house.” and stomps about cursing me and my attempts to undermine his heathy eating plan.

I can’t win for losing.

And I definitely can’t eat piece of Dark Chocolate Orange because that’s all gone.

And, you know how you say something enough, it loses power or sounds weird or just play wrong and dirty? Now I can’t say Dark Chocolate Orange Ball without getting the giggles. Because, apparently, I'm petty and I'm as mature as a twelve year old boy.

But this is what happens when you’re married or living with someone. You get all excited to eat a piece of your Dark Chocolate Orange Ball and you find nothing but unsatisfying crumbs in a Ziploc bag tucked behind a billion stupid chocolate cream eggs that you can’t eat because it would “throw off the system” and wouldn’t eat anyway because they’re gross. The empty bag situation would never happen if I were living alone. Unless I’d been drinking too much, lamenting my living alone status and forgotten I’d eaten my Dark Chocolate Orange in a drunken haze of midnight munching. And if that were the case, I’d deserve the disappointment.

Also, I find it a bit weird that both Husband and I are coveting chocolate that’s masquerading as a food item. I would like to take this time to point out that mine is pretending to be a fruit and Husband’s just is a weird egg shaped thing with goo in it that supposed to have come out of a bunny? No wonder he’s stealing mine.